


Snowfall

by sacredsymbol821



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, but given that it's a stupid decision I've elected to ignore it, but like. Intys is stupid. it's not my fault, i recognize the council has made a decision, much happier than the first one, though I broke the lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 02:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21129068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacredsymbol821/pseuds/sacredsymbol821
Summary: Byleth disappears looking for a place for the army to rest, and the Blue Lions search for their beloved Professor.





	Snowfall

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on a Dimitri kick, I know this. The only way out through such a muse is to write it, unfortunately.

The army had been marching through the coldest parts of Faerghus in the middle of Winter. The air was so cold that every time Byleth breathed in, his lungs hurt. He was doing his best to keep up with Dedue and Dimitri, the latter of who was the future King of this land, but he was not used to this cold and wind. His cheeks were beginning to burn as well from the icy winds. Unfortunately for them, they were completely in the open on their way to Fhirdiad with no cover, so they couldn’t stop for one person. Even if that person was as prominent as he was. Byleth frowned, then forced his legs to keep walking in stride with the much taller men. Dedue always took to where Dimitri could see him. Byleth preferred his blindspot anyway, if only to prevent the other man from losing the other eye at the very least.

“How much farther do we have to walk?” Sylvain asked from behind the three of them. His shoulders were beginning to sag. Ingrid was walking next to him- it was way too windy and cold to even attempt using a pegasus. Felix was acting like the cold wasn’t affecting him, but his cheeks too were rosy from the wind being slammed into them. 

Byleth did not have to look at the rest of the army to know that they were feeling the same. 

“Dimitri, is there anywhere that we can rest for the day?”

“We cannot rest here. The army will die from the cold.” Dimitri responded, turning to face him. Dedue’s eyes slid over to him when he talked as well.

“I know that, but we’re all lagging behind. And starting a fire here in the middle of nowhere would be...bad.” Byleth sighed, and looked up. At the very edge of his vision, he could have sworn that he saw a shadow of a mountain in the distance. 

“I’ll be right back.” He announced.

“Where are you going?” Dimitri asked. 

“I thought I saw something. I’ll be right back.”

“Professor, I don’t think that is a good idea. In this storm, you could be waylaid-” Before Dimitri could finish his sentence, Byleth was gone. He did not like having the Professor away from his side. Instead, he allowed himself to frown and flicked his bangs out of his working eye angrily. He really should have cut his hair at some point after he got back to the monastery instead of dwelling on the atrocities he had committed-

Dimitri closed his eye, stopped, and took a deep breath in until the cold air threatened to break his lungs, then watched the breath he took in puff out into the storm. He did not have the time to dwell on the past. Right now, there was a freezing army he had to lead to warmth and rest. 

“Your Highness. Should I go after the Professor?” Dedue asked.

The ire he usually felt when Dedue called him Highness was muted by his worry for the Professor. 

“No. Then I will have to send out a search party for two of you.” He shook his head. During the time he had spent on the run, he had learned to look out for tracks of those that would have his head or for game. Even with the snow already starting to cover the Professor’s tracks, he could see exactly where he went. Bundling himself deeper into his cloak, Dimitri started to follow where the Professor had went off too. Behind him, he heard the mutterings of discontent with the current situation. He felt for the soldiers, but at this point, they either kept walking or they died from the cold. After a long time of the incessant cold wind blowing his bangs in his eye, he noticed that the Professor’s tracks suddenly went left, and there was red tracks that veered left as well. 

“That’s not good.” Sylvain frowned. The usual light spark in his eyes was replaced with anger. 

“What do we do?” Dedue asked. 

“I don’t see any bodies...Was our professor dragged somewhere?” Ingrid asked.

“No.” Dimitri shook his head. Dragging in the snow looked much different than footprints. Finally, they came upon a place where the tracks faded. Only then did Dimitri look up to see a cave. Dedue, without being asked, went inside the cave. Dimitri turned around to his childhood friends then. Sylvain was unusually quiet, Ingrid’s lip was wobbling from the cold, and Felix was shooting daggers at him, but tiredly.

“He’s there, your Highness.” Dedue told Dimitri, who turned on his heel then.

“Himself or his body?” Dimitri asked.

“There are corpses in the tunnel.” Dedue answered. 

Dimitri’s heart turned cold, and he hurried into the tunnel with Areadbar at the ready. He noticed that his hands were shaking, and it wasn’t from the cold. He had smelled the metallic smell of blood to much these past 5 years to ever be comfortable with it. He found the corpses that Dedue was talking about, along with the Professor’s body, unmoving, under one of those corpses. The Sword of the Creator was through the man’s chest. Dimitri tore that corpse off Byleth angrily before kicking it farther into the cave. He ignored the wet crunch the sound made and dropped Areadbar before he carefully picked up the Professor with his hands. He couldn’t tell if the blood on the body was The Professor’s or the other soldiers.

His hands had done nothing but take lives, so he didn’t know how to save them. He had to think back five very long bloody years to remember the First Aid lessons the Officers had all been taught in the Officer’s Academy. Professor Manuela had said to start with the Pulse of the person.

“The Professor needs a healer!” Dimitri yelled. 

“I’ll get one immediately.” Dedue answered back loudly.

He took his right gauntlet off, and looked at the Professor’s face for a second. There was a pulse point at the neck, and one on the wrist. 

Dimitri almost laughed at even considering the pulse point on the neck. With his brute strength, he could kill the Professor. Grabbing one wrist, he took off one glove as carefully as he could without hurting the other man and carefully pressed his first two fingers into the vein as lightly as he could.

There was no pulse. 

Immediately, the ghosts in his head started a cacophony of different sounds and faces. Glenn laughed at his incompetence, his father frowned at him disappointedly, and his stepmother looked down on him. What would the Professor’s Ghost do to haunt him? After all he had done for him when Dimitri was at his lowest point, he hadn’t been able to save him when he walked away to save the army from cold for five minutes.

The rage he had unlearned at Edelgard came back with the ghosts, as well. It was another life she would pay for, even if it cost him his in the process, he would get revenge on her after burning her castle to the ground-. 

Then, the Professor stirred.

Dimitri blinked and reached for Areadbar to protect himself from whatever undead demon his Professor had become- and watched the Professor jerk upward, with the Sword of the Creator in hand, glowing a fierce orange.

“Oh. Dimitri. You found me. That’s good.” The Professor said, as if he hadn’t been dead a few minutes ago. 

Dimitri opened his mouth to say something, but no words came.

“What’s wrong?” Byleth asked, squinting at him.

“You had no pulse.” Dimitri answered.

Byleth looked toward him and immediately understood, a look of shock coming across his face.

“I’ve never had one.” He admitted.

“You’re absolutely sure?” Dimitri asked, Edelgard and dead ghosts he’d promised to forget forgotten once again.

“Yes. I could have sworn I told you this.”

Dimitri shook his head vehemently. 

“I think I would have remembered that before you gave me quite a fright.” He answered, then sighed before looking at the Professor. 

“What happened?” 

“Well. I found this cave, found some Imperial soldiers in it, fought them off, and then I think I knocked my head on something, because I don’t remember anything else until you were pointing Areadbar at me.” Byleth said, frowning.

Dimitri’s entire face flushed. 

“Ah. You see, I panicked.” He admitted. 

“You panicked?” Byleth asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I thought you were undead.” Dimitri hung his head in shame. 

“Just because I don’t have a pulse doesn’t mean I’m undead!” Byleth protested.

At that point, Manuela and Mercedes walked into the cave.

“You don’t have a pulse?!” They said in unison, and ushered Dimitri outside of the cave. The army had not waited for the signal to make camp before doing it themselves. Dimitri was much too tired to care about semantics and vague misinterpretation of orders that were never given as he watched the fires and tents go up.

Mercedes and Manuela finally came out of the tent when the sun was low in the sky.

“Our Professor is fine, odd heartbeat aside. He’s chilly, though, and there’s a cut on his right shoulder. He should rest for the rest of the day, Your Highness.” Manuela told Dimitri, who nodded. Only after he watched them leave did he walk back into the tunnel. Byleth had started a fire in the tunnel and was huddled by it when he heard him approach. 

“Hello again, Dimitri.” He greeted. He was still cold, as his hands were under his armpits. The wind could still reach them inside the cave. 

He wasn’t cold, so he took the cloak off his shoulders and put it around the Professor. Byleth looked at him when he handed it to him, opened his mouth to protest, and didn’t, instead choosing to frown even though he was clearly much warmer. It was almost enough to make Dimitri smile. For the rest of the night, neither of them said a word to each other, enjoying the compatible silence.

**Author's Note:**

> -Okay so I know that Byleth technically has a pulse but no heartbeat, but like I said in the tags, that makes no sense for reasons I'm not qualified to explain as a history major. In my terms, if you don't have a heartbeat you don't have a pulse. I know, I'm writing about a high fantasy world where the geography makes absolutely no sense, you have kids that can throw fireballs from their hands and pegasi and wyverns fly everywhere, but I draw the line at basic human anatomy. Also, I would have liked for that tidbit to be addressed with the students at some point.  
-Thanks for listening to my silly rant about how human anatomy works in Fire Emblem, where your units regularly miss beasts and cut through armor like it's butter, and stand in the way of getting literal barrels of bombs and poison thrown at them.  
-As always, thanks for reading!


End file.
